Chomcheun Siripunkaw. Evaluation of microsatellite loci polymorphism in the Asian elephant, Elephas maximus . Master's Degree(Environmental Biology). Mahidol University. : Mahidol University, 2003.
Evaluation of microsatellite loci polymorphism in the Asian elephant, Elephas maximus
Abstract:
Microsatellites are now being widely used as highly informative genetic
markers for studying molecular ecology in various organisms, including in endangered
species. This research intends to use highly polymorphic microsatellite loci to
generate markers for individual identification of the Asian elephant with sufficient
reliability for application in future ecological study of wild the Asian elephant. The
study simply took the advantages of using 8 pairs of cross-species primers that had
been developed from African elephant (LafMS01, LafMS02, LafMS03, LafMS04,
FH48, FH60, FH94, and FH102) for trial of Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) on the
captive Asian elephant without the need of developing species-specific primers. The
potential of cross-species primers was supported with their efficiencies of amplifying
orthologous loci of 98% from DNA derived from blood samples and 63% from DNA
derived from dung samples. Thus it is possible to infer that microsatellite primer
binding sites of these loci have been conserved through 5 million years of evolutionary
divergence. The genotyping results of amplified microsatellite fragment sizes using
DNA derived from blood as templates were used for evaluation of microsatellite
polymorphism. The most polymorphic loci, ranked from the most polymorphic to the
least were as follows: FH102 (with 9 existing alleles, H0 of 0.85 and 32 available
genotypes), LafMS03 (with 7 existing alleles, H0 of 0.75 and 18 available genotypes),
FH94 (with 6 existing alleles, H0 of 0.70 and 12 available genotypes), LafMS01 (with
4 existing alleles, H0 of 0.70 and 5 available genotypes), FH60 (with 5 existing alleles,
H0 of 0.65 and 8 available genotypes), LafMS02 (with exiting alleles of 3, H0 of 0.40
and 4 available genotypes), FH48 (with 3 existing alleles, H0 of 0.056 and 3 available
genotypes), and LafMS04 (with existing alleles of 3 and H0 of 0.05 and 3 available
genotypes). Genotyping using 4 loci-genotyping, a multi-locus genotyping approach,
of FH102, LafMS03, FH94 and FH60, reveal the possibility in obtaining correct
genotyping of DNA derived from dung samples of 56% and enable 55,296 available
genotypes. However, the improvement of molecular techniques in order to aid
extraction yield and increase PCR efficiency will increase the reliability of genotyping
which uses microsatellite markers for non-invasive genotyping to study this freeranging
animal